I have always thought Joe Biden was a guy who played to the crowd just a little bit too much. But yesterday, he really proved his mettle as a first-class panderer and, along the way, undoubtedly derailed whatever slim hopes he had of riding his dark DLC pony to the White House. His comments in Columbia, South Carolina yesterday about the Confederate Battle Flag flying on the Statehouse grounds were remarkably inept and short-sighted:
“If I were a state legislator, I’d vote for it to move off the grounds — out of the state.”
Now, Joe Biden has managed to offend practically everybody in South Carolina. His now infamous November speech before a (mostly white) South Carolina Rotary Club luncheon in November was bad enough:
“My state was a slave state that fought beside the North. That’s only because we couldn’t figure out how to get to the South — there were a couple of other states in the way.”
He then repeated this absurdity to Chris Wallace on FOX news after Wallace asked if he could be competitive in South Carolina as a Northeastern liberal.
“You don’t know my state. My State was a slave state. My state was a border state. “My state is anything (but) a Northeast liberal state.”
…implying (I guess) that he has real right-wing bigot bonafides that should be extremely attractive to unreconstructed Southerners.
Perhaps yesterday’s Confederate flag bandwagon-pander-gaffe was intended to counter the my-state-is-a-slave-state-pander-gaffe- that would certainly be typical beltway punditocracy think–but this was a deadly over-reaction. I can’t help but wonder how many beltway consultants it took to screw in that red light bulb. There is no question Joe Biden has been stroking South Carolina for years, hoping to get a leg up in the Southern Primaries. He got high marks for his eulogy of Strom Thurmond in 2002 and the Senator has been to the state dozens of times since then, trying to build an organization. But, as far is South Carolina is concerned, Joey might as well pack up his tent and his consultants and go back to the beltway because, with a single stroke of the Biden blunder blade, he has killed his chances there.
Joe should have paid more attention when they asked him to appear at this “hot-potato” rally. (Yes, I realize that Chris Dodd chimed in too, but that is another story.) John McCain learned his lesson the hard way in the 2000 Presidential primaries about the political danger of meddling in this sticky wicket (particularly for an outsider.) Two incumbent SC governors (one Democrat and one Republican) were denied a second term simply for suggesting that it might be time to consider moving the flag from the dome. For better or for worse, South Carolina doesn’t cotton to being told what to do by uppity Yankee Senators with an agenda–never has.
Removing the flag from the dome of the South Carolina statehouse was a painful and difficult process. There were many creative alternatives proposed on all sides, but the NAACP refused to sign on to any of them, so this less-than-perfect compromise is what they got and what they’ll have to live with. For now, the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia will continue to fly next to the Confederate Soldier’s monument. It is part of that monument now. There is absolutely no way the South Carolina legislature is going to revisit the flag flap again–not for a long, long time at any rate. It is no more realistic to believe (or even hope) that South Carolina’s (very red) legislature is going to take that flag down than to believe that they are going to demolish the Confederate Statue itself.
Biden is kidding himself, anyway, if he thinks he’ll enjoy the support of Black voters in South Carolina. John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson and Wes Clark (among others, probably) will leave him in the red Carolina dust. He won’t know what hit him. But one thing is certain: all of those white Rotarians and suburban moderates he was so assiduously courting are finished with him now. None of them want to be reminded again of this divisive South Carolina problem, especially by Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, from Delaware and Connecticut.
Here is my fearless prediction: If Joe Biden even manages to stay in the race until the South Carolina primary, I predict that he’ll come in fourth of fifth. Then, after his paltry single-digit performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, he will withdraw from the race.